PASADENA – Caltech officials and researchers were standing a little taller Wednesday after getting a shout-out during President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address for the campus’ cutting-edge work on sun-based renewable energy.

In a speech that highlighted America’s continued tradition of technological innovation, Obama on Tuesday singled out Caltech as one of the nation’s leaders in sustainable energy research.

“At the California Institute of Technology, they’re developing a way to turn sunlight and water into fuel for our cars,” the president told the joint session of Congress.

Caltech chemistry professor Nathan S. Lewis is one of the researchers heading up that project. He said Wednesday he was “pretty happy” to have the Energy Innovation Hub project he heads recognized but more heartened by the president’s commitment.

“I haven’t watched (the speech), but I saw the transcript and was able to read the paragraphs and know it was about the spirit of the clean energy agenda – and I wholeheartedly agree,” Lewis said. “I’ve been part of panels and other communities saying that for several years now, and we’re all very gratified to hear it’s made its way up to the president’s attention.”

Obama said his administration was “issuing a challenge” to researchers, likening the push to develop clean energy to the space race of the 1960s.

“We’re telling America’s scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we’ll fund the Apollo projects of our time.”

Caltech is in the forefront of clean-energy research, Lewis said.

“We’re still the leader in clean-energy innovation and we intend to keep that way,” he said, speaking from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a partner in the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis in Caltech’s Jorgensen Laboratory building.

In July 2009, Lewis’ team of scientists and engineers won a U.S. Department of Energy award of up to $122 million over five years to develop commercially viable ways of converting the sun’s energy directly into fuel.

The aim is to produce clean energy through a process similar to plant photosynthesis, by combining sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.

“We actually are bold enough to know that the first prototype we build is going to fail,” Lewis said, likening it to the Wright Brothers’ first efforts at flight. “You learn from your failures.”